On Thursday, Cody Wilson, the de facto face of the organization, received a letter from the government agency asserting that making the files available was in violation of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA), a piece of legislation enacted in 1976 largely aimed at preventing weapons from ending up in the wrong places (Syria, for example).

In its letter, the State Department’s Office of Defense Trade Control Compliance noted that it wanted to review the files to ensure that they were compliant with the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), a set of regulations created by the aforementioned AECA.

“Until the Department provides Defense Distributed with final [commodity jurisdiction] determinations, Defense Distributed should treat the above technical data as ITAR-controlled,” the document explained. “This means that all data should be removed from public access immediately."

The files in question were first made available on Monday, just a day after Wilson and Defense Distributed uploaded a video showing him use the Liberator. Wilson told Forbes' Andy Greenberg that the Liberator file had been downloaded more than 100,000 times in the first two days.

Wilson and his non-profit organization have taken down the requested files from the site and posted a red banner that reads "DEFCAD files are being removed from public access at the request of the U.S. Department of Defense Trade Controls. Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information." Given Wilson's longstanding opposition to any type of government regulation—he describes himself as a cryptoanarchist—that last sentence is most likely a thinly-veiled jab.

Despite the takedown, and this being the Internet, the files are still available online and can be downloaded elsewhere. Earlier today, TorrentFreak reported that the blueprint files for The Liberator are now available on The Pirate Bay, the world’s largest BitTorrent-based file sharing site.

“TPB has for close to 10 years been operating without taking down one single torrent due to pressure from the outside. And it will never start doing that,” a representative for the rogue file-sharing side told TorrentFreak.

The State Department's letter is the latest in a slew of setbacks Wilson and Defense Distributed have faced since they first entered the national spotlight. In the last year alone, the organization has had their crowdfunding campaign pulled from Indiegogo, had their first printer recalled by the manufacturer, and were basically told that they and their kind were not welcomed by file-sharing site Thingiverse. Not only did Wilson and his cohorts overcome said obstacles, but each time they came back stronger than before.